Crawlers Milestone

Instead of continuing to sandwich sporatic blog posts with Crawlers pages I've decided to just start posting the most recent pages here again (hopefully on time). If you've been exclusively following the comic through this blog you will be surprised to learn that page 200 was just posted http://crawlers.thecomicseries.com/comics/200

You have some catching up to do (since I never even posted 169). Chapter 5 is going to change things up quite a bit.

The watercolor above is a study I did for an Art Challenge but never posted it.

Art Challenge 8 & 10

To save time this time I combined two of the Art Challenges. Challenge 8 of making a movie poster of Crawlers and Challenge 10 to make a drawing with a limited Palette.

Anthology is out

"Print is Dead" an anthology including my short story "And We Call Ourselves Friends" is now available on indyplanet http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5388

ARMORsWARmS part 3 of 3

I have more Beetles in mind but these were the last three I drew before I got it out of my system so I could go back to my 'real work' (though it all pays the same, not at all). For late comers this series of sketches is based on the armored adventurer Abe Jenkins who most notoriously went by the name The Beetle, but also the jet themed hero MACH 1 through MACH 5.

 On the LEFT
Flanged bombardier beetles can shoot boiling hot fluid, this made them a natural choice for this project. I was thinking of making some kind of long range energy weapon for this design but I didn't include it in the drawing because I was also playing with the idea of him having a few dozen drones.  The armor has many design elements from MACH 1. I thought the blister beetle from my sketch looks a little like a skull (it's upside down so crane your neck to see it). Somehow making the skull motif in the mask made him look something like Iron Man
 On the RIGHT
The blister beetle is actually range of beetles that excrete a nasty burning chemical. I took the giant butt of the bug and made it a tank for his primary weapon that squirts some acidic sludge.

 

On the LEFT and RIGHT
When I got stuck on the other designs I drew these to that are basically just studies of the MACH 1 (Left) and MACH 2 (right) armors. I did try to insect them up a little espeacially the MACH 1. I also put different forearm blasters on MACH 1 because he is supposed to be based on the fire fly, so I wanted to have a few elements that could glow

Meh Humbug

I don't celebrate Christmas (I don't plan to have a celibate Christmas either). There's two main reasons for this: I don't like whole gift mandate thing and I'm an atheist. I don't care for Christmas as a religious holiday. I don't care for it as a cultural holiday. 
 As someone who doesn't care about Christmas I want to talk a little about this whole war on nonsense. Like a lot of nonsense it comes from Fox News.

Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas
The reason why big companies and media outlets say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas is because of Chanukkah and other coinciding holidays. They are all religious holidays so it isn't some secular plot.

Religious vs. Cultural
Very little of the things we think of as being part of Christmas have anything to do with religion. Some atheist and agnostics celebrate it. I don't because other than egg nog it doesn't have any appeal to me. And as I understand it I'm not fully appreciating the egg nog because I don't drink alcohol.
 I don't think there is anything wrong with celebrating something from your childhood even if you do not hold your parents beliefs. We are pretty big about Halloween even though I don't believe in spooks and goblins.

Most of society looks at Christmas as primarily a secular activity whether they admit it or not. The actual Saint Klaus did not give presents to every good boy and girl on Christmas. He anonymously donated to poor families. The part in the bible about Jesus over turning tables in the market wasn't because there was clearanced items for his birthday

Christian American
I know a lot of this war on Christmas stuff comes from secular groups fighting to remove the nativity from government property. I have mixed feelings on this. I don't personally care enough about such petty disputes to take action. On the other hand there are people out there that egg on secularist by claiming that this is a Christian country.
It isn't and it shouldn't be. Breaking down the seperation of church and state only cheapens both. The same is true for the whimsical holiday and religious tradition of the week before new years. Secularizing it is more about including those who don't share the faith than "oppressing" the majority who do. This season is supposed to be about warm feelings from humanity when it is so cold outside.

Comics
I've poked fun at Christmas a couple of times. I used to make holiday gags to promote MENTAL

and for my graduation I created a comic with a different perspective on Christmas (unintentionally political) "And You Thought Christmas was a Victimless Crime

ARMORsWARmS part 2 of 3

To recap: This is the second in a series of sketches where I took designs of Marvel Comics' The Beetle (aka Abe Jenkins aka MACH I-V) and adapted them to take after various beetles. Different beetles means different powers. These are not in any kind of logical order. I'm just posting them in the order they appear in my sketch book.

On the LEFT
The rove beetle can shoot it's jaw making it the perfect candidate for becoming Beetle armor. This was one of the last drawings to be finished, so my approach was to take what I learned from the others and base the design on the insect itself. He would be a mid to close range fighter so I put spinning blades on his forearms. I've also made a little doodle of what the jaw launched would look like. I would probably redesign it to be something more disturbing.

On the RIGHT
The hercules beetle is a weird creature. The horn on the head and collar make a claw to help it wrestle opponents. Hercules in mythology and Marvel comics is a great wrestler, which I kept in mind for this design. The head and collar claw is modeled after the animal and I made the face minimalistic with Spider-man shaped eyes. I wanted to make this armor stronger than the others but without just drawing the character bigger than the others or bulkier. What I decided on was adding two insectile legs. The wearer can use these arms to help manipulate someone caught in the head claw or to hook into the back of the gauntlets to make punches more devastating. Instead of antenni I gave this costume two energy blasters that aim up at whoever is caught in the claw.

 On the LEFT
The whirligig is an aquatic beetle. It has an unusual shape so I tried to capture that to the design. They eyes are based on goggles worn in the first version of The Beetle's armor. Also the first version of Jenkins armor had these weird tentacle fingers gauntlets that I slapped on there. I figured if anyone needed to be able to stick to things it would be this guy.

On the RIGHT
I believe this Beetle design comes from the golden tortoise back beetle. I took a different approach on this one. I thought the shape of the animal resembled Captain America's shield, so I incorporated flavors of Cap along with Beetle motifs. The two antenna are placed like an insects but I rendered them off of the antenna off of Jenkin's MACH II armor.

I got this

The challenge of this series from page one is making the comic interesting for both people into pen and paper RPGs and people who are not.
http://crawlers.thecomicseries.com/comics/3

Dexter Early Cuts Review (a few minor spoilers)

I'm looking forward to tonight's episode of Dexter. The Showtime series has from it's beginning been a dark reflection of mainstream superhero comics. All the elements are there: Dexter is a vigilante who works for the police as a day job. Dexter has unusual abilities (he can often recognize others with a dark side) with a dramatic origin. Special training. More recently in the new season Dexter, Julia Stiles is trying out to be his new sidekick.
I'm not the first to notice this connection. In the continuity of the show there is a comic based on Dexter's work. Showtime has been promoting Dexter for years at ComicCon. And last year Sho.com has been running webisodes of a Dexter animated series called "Early Cuts" which features the art of many great cartoonist.

Webisode Review
Title: Dexter Early Cuts http://www.sho.com/site/dexter/webisodes.do
Creator(s): Michael C. Hall, Kyle Baker, Ty Templeton, Andre Vera Martinez, Devin Lawson, Tim Schlattmann, Lauren Gussis, Bill Sienkiewicz and David Mack.

Art

All of the art is really spot on though the style varies from artist to artist. Sometimes the images are a little to spot on of actor Michael C. Hall which is odd when some things are rotoscoped and others are not. My favorite work is the Dark Echo story illustrated by Sienkiewicz and Mack. They compliment each other well and really match the tone of the series.
The animation is fairly static. It's closer to animated panels of a webcomic than an animated series. Most of the time this isn't an issue but there is one conversation in particular where the mouth animation took me out of the story.

Writing
The writing blends in perfectly with the show because it is written by members of the writing staff. Being an animated series allows them to create sequences that may be too expensive or difficult to film. Yet they don't over do it.


Sound

If you are a fan of Michael C. Hall's narration on the show prepare for some ear candy. Thanks to the static animation much of the dialogue that would be present in live action is replaced with narration. It is really effective with Dexter because it puts the audience in an uncomfortable place next to Dexter's thoughts.

Overall
This is one of my dream projects. Before this project came out I was keeping an ear toward my friends in LA hoping they would make some contact on Dexter I could pitch a Dexter webcomic to (my idea was a parrallell series that would retell each episode of the show from different characters points of view). This series is an even better idea. And the animation is a better idea.
http://www.sho.com/site/dexter/webisodes.do 

That'd be a no...

As I'm posting this I am listening to Kevin Smith talk about a new podcast he is starting where he will run D&D http://crawlers.thecomicseries.com/comics/2

Dungeon Crawlers: I thought we were cool...

I haven't role-played in years and years. A few months ago my stepson and his friends said something about D&D (which I played like twice even when I did role-play), the idea of the Charismatic Blade jumped in my head, and suddenly I wanted to do a comic about role-playing. weird
http://crawlers.thecomicseries.com/comics/1/

Under Batman:Under the Red Hood

Movie Review
Title: Batman: Under The Red Hood
Creator(s): Judd Winnick and a bunch others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_Under_the_Red_Hood

Art

The art throughout the movie is beautifully colored and drawn. 3D affects are integrated well ranging from barely noticeable to seamlessly integrated.
The title sequence art is even better. I would actually prefer the whole movie to be in the style of the title sequence. Though I feel this way about almost every animated movie that has come out recently. Yeah it would make the movies more static, but I don't know, I'd appreciate the 75 minute eyegasm

Writing

Judd Winnick was one of my favorite writers before going over to DC. I would have followed him over but I'm broke. And Winnick not only wrote the movie but the source material "Under The Hood" which sounds a little like a comic about working on the Batmobile.
While I didn't like most of the Joker's lines in the movie (which was only in part because of the writing) one character does shine: The Red Hood. This character is DC's answer to Deadpool. My best argument for this is a big spoiler. But trust me.
The Red Hood is a great villain to Batman especially for a number of reasons. Red Hood balances out Batman's grimness with a dark sense of humor and like any good villain he brings the heroes mission into question. RH's agenda is perhaps a better method than Batman's endless beatings on criminals.

Sound
What stands out is that the voice of the Joker does not work for me at all. I understand the casting. Someone went "The guy who plays Bender would be a great Joker!" It almost sounds like he was going for the Heath Ledger Joker but missing. It's one of the first voices of the movie and I almost turned it off.

Overall
I'm a pretty big Deadpool fan and seeing Winnick write a character so much like the 'merc with a mouth' is a treat for me. Most superhero fans would agree with me. It fits well into continuity of the comics. There are plenty of action sequences (including one with a robot). And the story wraps everything up at the end.
If you are not a comic fan or one of those 'just Batman' people I run into occationally, don't worry. you won't get lost unless you get hung up on who some of the more obscure characters are.